


the moon floats through her

by asteropes



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alcohol, Anonymous Sex, Casual Sex, Earthborn (Mass Effect), Gen, Gun Violence, Implied Sexual Content, Implied mental health problems, Implied/Referenced Sex, Murder, Pregnancy Phobia, Pregnancy Scares, Street Rats, Vomiting, street gangs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-05 00:34:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3098420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asteropes/pseuds/asteropes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is born on Earth.</p><p>She does not know of numbers, or letters, or of parents. She does not know of those that brought her up, and taught her. She does not know of sacrifice, or bravery, or truth, or happiness.</p><p>Instead, she knows how to run; how to jump; how to hide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the moon floats through her

She is born on Earth.

She does not know of numbers, or letters, or of parents. She does not know of those that brought her up, and taught her. She does not know of sacrifice, or bravery, or truth, or happiness.

Instead, she knows how to run; how to jump; how to hide. When another carries a colicky baby, she knows where to find the best food out of the dumpsters. When a child is crying, she knows how to soothe; stroke greasy hair, hum under her breath. When they find a body, tiny and curled in on itself, she knows where to leave it to let grown ups find it.

She knows how to survive the scraps that so frequently occur between the older children and the younger. She knows how to dodge a punch. She knows how to hit harder back. ( _thumb outside the fist; jabbing elbows and knees; duck and dodge and weave_ )

She does not know her own history. She does not know that children should not know how to fight. She doesn't understand the desperation of adults, or the choices they have to make. She doesn't understand words such as unconditional love, or bedtime stories. She does not know about cows or songs or aliens or planets.

She does know of this: that she stares at the adults who pass her on the streets - always moving, never stopping - and watches them with bloodshot eyes, dark with hunger. Hunger for what, she is never sure.

Her name, as her face, as her existence, is ever changing. "What is it today?" someone will ask. "Amara," she will reply.

And oh, she knows names. Hundreds of them. She will choose them as she changes - choose them as she picks and chooses herself. She is a metamorphosis - always changing - and the result is never quite beautiful.

She is a shapeshifter in the truest sense: she does not know who she is, so she can be anyone.

* * *

Life on the streets of a city isn't easy. She ages quickly. She is taller now - almost as tall as those she fights, and when the children start to look at her with fear, she leaves one set of alleyways for another.

She does not know what a gang is until she has fallen into one, and misinterprets it as the family the holo-screens so frequently project. She is fed - she has warm bodies when she sleeps - she is no longer cold. She thinks it is happiness.

It is not.

"What's your name?" they'll ask. "Kathryn," is her response.

She knows how to pick a lock. She knows how to jolt into someone and take from their hands or their pockets or their bag or from their life. She knows how to hold a gun, and fuck, in her time, she'll hold a lot of guns. The first shakes in her hands, but she steadies it, and smiles at the difference between smooth metal and the years and years and years of anger under her fingernails.

None shake after.

"What's our name?" they ask, the bodies that exist in the periphery of her own, and they look down at themselves, and know. The Reds.

The first time she shoots a gun she feels it ring in her ears; rattle from her fingers into the hollows of her bones. She steps towards the crumpled body, red blossoming across its clothes, and thinks _dead_.

The finality of it is horrifying. She turns and runs. The only thing she can hear is that echoing shot, and her heartbeat, and the sound of her feet on the ground. She does not relax again.

When she curls up that evening, she can feel the gunshot still, rattling from its space in her bones and back out.

"Are you cold?" someone asks. "Alone?" She wants to answer _neither_ , and _both_.

* * *

She does not know how she survives, but she does. She keeps breathing, and consuming food, and the Reds becomes bigger and bigger. Their crimes begin to grow in both scope and scale.

She scavenges. They all eat. It is easier, being alone, when you are alone with others.

She is good at handling a gun. Her hair is unwashed. She still feels that first shot reverberating inside of her. When the smaller members of her family - the underfed ones, with the ribs that stick out further than anyone else - break in to places no street rat should be, she takes point.

She knows how to kill. She knows how to stop feeling. She knows how to knock back shots, and knock out men, and knock knock knock until a door opens and then storm in.

She does not know how to stop wishing for family - for a name. She is Jane. She is Victoria. She is Dinah. For a week she cycles through E names. The next she is back to emptiness. She does not know how to live with the desolation that consumes her. She does not know how to kill herself. This, she reasons, is the closest anyone can come to death. She is not incorrect.

She knows she is truly in when they hand her alcohol after a successful mission. The first time it burns the back of her throat. The second, it gives her a buzz. The third, she wakes up in a pool of her own vomit and only thinks, what a waste of food.

Her shooting becomes better. She gets handed bigger guns; more leadership. She can use semi-automatics, and rifles, and sawed off shotguns. She has killed more than can be counted on all her fingers and toes. She makes sure she does not regret any.

* * *

The alleyways grow smaller, and the city grows bigger. They call her Boss, or Skipper, or Number One. She knows how to sell drugs, and can shoot better than anyone else in the gang. She does not cower to those towering over her, threatening her. Her fists have been fighting for a damn long time now.

She is not a person to the Reds; she is an icon.

An icon that falls into bed with strangers.

People, she finds, will do anything for a pretty face and swaying hips. It is easy to lie to them - much easier than the lies she tells to herself.  She does not enjoy it at first, but it is much easier to believe when the world has reduced to two. Over time, it gets better.

In the mornings, midway through showers or cigarettes or scrambled eggs, they ask "What's your name?"

She never gives the same one twice. She never sleeps with the same partner twice.

When she returns to base/home/the alleys (and she is never sure what to call it), she gets a disapproving look. "And what if you get pregnant?" someone asks.

"No need to worry about that," she responds, because pregnant people are fit and healthy and sane, and she is none of those things.

* * *

The Reds gets bigger. She grows taller. Alcohol burns the back of her throat. She cries at night and the only way they can tell is due to the clean streaks running down from her eyes to her chin.

"What's your name?" they ask.

She does not say anything, but thinks: _Boss. Kathryn. Skipper. Elizabeth, Ellie, Erin. Alone._ She does not know. If she is honest, she has never known. Her shapeshifting is too adept; in the space between her birth and the present, she has lost herself.

She steps out onto the streets like she did as a child and stares, eyes bloodshot, at the faces of adults, but now she is the same height as them. She breathes in the air of the metropolis and knows that no matter how far she runs, she will never be able to escape.

She does not get pregnant. She does not search, romantically, for long lost parents. She does not know her alphabet particularly well, nor her social niceties, nor how it feels to not have to worry about your next meal. However, what she does know, is how to shoot a gun.

* * *

She escapes.

It is the middle of the day. She lies - claims she's going out to pickpocket. No-one questions it. She is, after all, their leader. Instead, she walks to the recruitment office. By the time she arrives, it is almost dark.

She knows they will be fine without her. She knows she will be able to live with the guilt. She knows her life cannot go on like this - this half-spun existence, lingering between light and shadow. She knows, if she does not escape soon, she will never escape.

She does not know it is her birthday.

The door tinkles as it opens, and a gust of warm air hits her. She steps inside, rubbing her arms; wondering if they will be able to live without her tonight. It will be a cold night.

"So," the officer inside the door says, and meets her gaze. "Who are you?"

She has been doing this for as long as she can remember - picking and choosing. She knows of some things, and nothing of others.

She will not know her parents. She does not know what she is. She does not know how to forgive. She finds, now, she no longer cares.

She thinks, and lies, and chooses a name. "Shepard," she says. And allows herself a little hope.


End file.
